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Shrinking middle class, how the middle class is really lower class in america

Shrinking middle class, how the middle class is really lower class in america - Research Paper Example

Summary

The portion of Americans who identify themselves to be in the middle class has taken fall, whereas those that identify describe themselves as lower class has increased in the past six years. Based on a latest study by Pew Research Center, the portion of Americans who take…

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Shrinking middle class, how the middle class is really lower class in america

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Subject: Sociology
Type: Research Paper
Level: Masters
Pages: 4 (1000 words)
Downloads: 2
Author: zachary43

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Employment in the jobs of middle skill went up by 46 percent in 1980 to 2009 as compared to the low-skilled jobs that went up by 110 percent, which is according to the analysis of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (Weller, 23). It turns out that individuals who took themselves to be in the middle class in 2008, almost one third of them now identify themselves as lower class or lower middle class. This identification of class it is deeply connected to culture, and not income only, and the decrease means that most people about one in very six Americans now think of themselves as not only suffering from income decrease but suffering from a decrease in income that they consider permanent.

Permanent enough such that they now reside in a different neighborhood, associate with different people, and in fact, take themselves as part of a different culture than they were six years ago. The portion of young people between the age of 18 and 29 who were part of the lower class has almost become two times in the past six years. This age group has been hard hit by the great economic recession and it is struggling with the rates of unemployment, which are higher than the national average.

The rate of this group was 9.5 percent in December 2007, in comparison to 6.5 percent among all adults (Zweig, 211). College graduates have also experienced a downward slide in their viewed social platform. Whereas the portion who feels that they are in the middle class has stayed almost the same, the percentage in the upper class decreased, whereas the percentage in the lower class increased. This proposes that the rich had a feeling that they have slid back into the middle class, and some of the people in middle class had a feeling that they have slipped back to lower class.

In addition, losses have been bigger for the households that are in the middle of the distribution of income for the households who are leading. For those households in the third quartile of the

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